By Ron Cammel
The Grand Rapids Press
GRAND RAPIDS – Almost painstakingly, a Tibetan Buddhist monk sprinkled colored sand onto a 2-by-2-foot board.
Passers-by could watch Thupten Tsondu Tashi through windows of Bazzani Associates over the course of three days as he leaned closely to the board, crafting the intricate sand mandala.
The culmination of Tashi’s work? He brushed off the sand, eliminating the design.
“Nothing is permanent,” Tashi said, explaining the 500-year-old mandala tradition. “Don’t get attached to anything.”
Tashi said he hopes such Buddhist teachings will stir some Americans to help spread them. The monk was in Grand Rapids this week as part of a six-city American tour to raise money for a school he plans to build in Mongolia to “train the mind.”
In 1959, Tashi, then 2, and about 100,000 others were exiled from Tibet to India. In India, he became administrator of a monastic university. Now he wants to make sure Mongolians, whose religion was suppressed under Communism, learn their ancestors’ faith, even while finances keep many from studying and Christian missionaries are influencing many with their care for the poor.
Tashi said Mongolia has schools for “external knowledge” — technology, logic — but the “value of humans, the value of love and compassion” is not being taught. In-depth Buddhist training is lacking because few know the Tibetan language, he said.
Modern education focuses on making a living but does not train the mind to be a “good” person, free of violence, Tashi said. If his school produces one good person who takes a leadership position, then that will be enough, he said.
“If one who is dangerous is in power, that is too much,” he said.
Tashi came to the United States at the same time the boy chosen by the Chinese government as the Panchen Lama, the second highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism, made a rare public appearance to foster patriotism and national unity. In 1995, the government rejected the Panchen Lama chosen by the Dalai Lama, and many believe the government kidnapped the boy.
Tashi said he pays little attention to such news. He said he does not know if the true Panchen Lama is alive and flung his hand away when asked about the importance of the position because the Panchen Lama chooses the next Dalai Lama.
“It’s not important,” he said. “The important thing is one person can come back and do something better than him.”
The Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama are believed to be reincarnations of the originals.
Tashi said everyone likes the current Dalai Lama because he is a good person. If the next, the 15th, is a good person, he will be important, Tashi said.
But it is possible the 15th is nothing like the 14th, he said.
“We need in this world one good person,” he said. “Sometimes the name of a position causes a bad thing. Don’t worry about the 15th Dalai Lama.”
